Cover of Science on American Television: A History by Marcel LaFollette / Univ. of Chicago Press

by Dan Vergano
USA TODAY
@dvergano, USA TODAY

by Dan Vergano
USA TODAY
@dvergano, USA TODAY

And whatever happened to the once-bright hopes that the idiot box would uplift the public's understanding of science? History's answers offer lessons for tomorrow's scientists and anyone else who cares about how people perceive science on its newest, shiniest home, the Internet.

"Just missed opportunity, after missed opportunity for scientists, who could have played a much greater role: That is the story of science on television," says historian Marcel LaFollette, author of the just-released Science on American Television: A History. "This is the story of how we started with Watch Mr. Wizard and ended up with Here Comes Honey Boo Boo," LaFollette says.

Science remains a respected topic in society, with 91% of people indicating they were at least moderately interested in scientific news, according to National Science Foundation surveys. At the same time, "Many Americans continue to give multiple incorrect answers to questions about basic factual knowledge of science or the scientific inquiry process," NSF reports, a situation that has been stable since the mid-1990s.

Why aren't we getting any smarter about science? Well, television isn't helping.

Mr. Wizard, the iconic kid's science show, ran the last rerun of its last incarnation, Mr. Wizard's World, on cable television more than a decade ago (Don Herbert, who starred in the series across four decades, died in 2007). And cable television today is "one bright spot," LaFollette says, with science-themed outlets such as the National Geographic Channel, flickering from origins that once looked much brighter.

Science's latest "brainchild" in the post-World War II era, "the visualization of researchers and their laboratories (on TV) at first seemed a promising possibility," LaFollette notes in her book's introduction. NBC began in the mid-1940s with Your World Tomorrow, brought to you by the New York City Board of Education. But the commercial demands on television networks, as advertisers paid more for dramas with the biggest audience, quickly asserted themselves. By 1952, only 0.3% of television shows in New York City were science shows.

The science shows that survived as TV boomed nationwide were ones that accommodated themselves to the medium, which demanded drama and dollars from ads. Watch Mr. Wizard brought the character of the scientist-showman, a "born ham," to the airwaves, leading to enduring figures from Carl Sagan to Neil deGrasse Tyson today. Meet Me at the Zoo and Zoo Parade created the wild kingdom documentary, where a narrator would tell a little story about animals on the screen, almost always dropping the details of the science from the narrative. A Chicago veterinarian pioneered another familiar formula with 1950's Animal Clinic: "a congenial, telegenic veterinarian conveying basic information about animal behavior and biology while confidently handling energetic but cooperative dogs, cats, birds, reptiles and rodents."

In television's first decades, parts of the science establishment awkwardly approached and avoided the small screen, with Johns Hopkins University (The Johns Hopkins Science Review), American Medical Association (Dr. Kildare) and perhaps most notably, the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian World), first sponsoring or advising shows. Then they would find themselves entangled in regrets over TV's almost inevitable omission of accuracy. Most finally fled from the financial costs, huge by scientific standards, of broadcast-quality productions. Groups such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science avoided the lowbrow medium of television altogether, largely turning to press conferences and school curriculums in its efforts to improve science literacy.

Growing congressional disgust in the 1960s with television's "vast wasteland" led to the Public Broadcasting System, home to Sesame Street and shows today such as Sid the Science Kid, and paltry efforts to include science on Saturday morning cartoon shows that died as soon as the heat died down. The same era saw the NOVA science documentary series start on Boston's WGBH-TV, seeded with money from the AAAS and the National Science Foundation. NOVA is rightly celebrated, LaFollette says, but over time a clear trend has developed toward audience-grabbing topics, such as pirate gold, jet fighters and the Bermuda Triangle predominating, all told in a "soap opera" format cemented into place in the 1970s.

"If you read old show notes, you can see the producers of even non-profit ventures reading audience overnight ratings like network television executives, because their corporate underwriters were going to ask hard questions about the audience size," LaFollette says. "You see this again and again. Scientists never understanding that television is a business, even when the money comes from a foundation, and that economic demands of some kind are going to largely shape the presentation of the science."

Television series such as Smithsonian World gravitated toward the moral questions in science, the drama, rather than dry descriptions of methods that scientists favored, much to their discomfort. "Scientists shy away from these kind of discussions, which is a shame because you can see places where we could have had discussions on why we believe in science or the real inner workings of research."

Today, science has largely vanished from shows except crime dramas such as NCIS and Bones. Those have their critics among experts worried the "CSI Effect" makes science look too easy. "Scientists should be thrilled by those shows because of the way they present science as a source of authority," LaFollette says, even if their depiction of reality, where characters can drive across Washington, D.C., in a few seconds' time can be a bit off. Another bright spot is the way that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert treat scientists on their shows, she says. "They treat them with more respect than their other guests, which is interesting."

But overall, "The challenge in writing a history of science on television is not being too depressing," LaFollette says. And she warns the history of science on TV and radio offers some warnings to folks hopeful today that the Internet will lead to big improvements in science literacy. Winning financial formulas get baked into new communication media very quickly and take over, she warns. And dollars, rather than experts' sense, also end up deciding what the public sees in the end.

"The deeper philosophical question that scientists always face is who owns their knowledge?" LaFollette adds. Television's history shows that without meeting the ownership demands of the new medium, scientists will find themselves shut out from having a voice in how their work is depicted. "Give me a few more 'Carla' Sagans too," she says, pointing to the paucity of female researchers on shows.

And the Internet may pose hurdles to science literacy even higher than broadcast shows. University of Wisconsin communications scholars Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele reported last week in the journal Science, for example, that the online comments can significantly undermine readers' views on topics. The more vituperation about a topic in the comments, the more risk that readers attach to it, they found in an experiment that presented volunteers with nanotechnology news. Simply altering the comments appended to the article to hostile ones changed people's perceptions.

"That's a new challenge. CBS didn't care if people fought in their living room over a show," LaFollette says.

Basically, scientists need a stronger science of science communication, she suggests. Foundations supporting science also need to step up to the plate to reliably deliver something thoughtful to an audience interested in quality, rather than sprinkling some seed money on corporate-funded shows and then walking away when they don't have an instant hit. "It doesn't matter if there is entertainment there or a few jokes on the Colbert show," LaFollette says. "It's not a problem if we then go back to talking with respect about science and trying to assist people in understanding what it means for society."